David Wahl on Creativity and Marketing

Making useful mistakes: creativity tip

Having your thoughts organized is usually a good thing, but sometimes to get creative you need to shake things up. If everything is where it’s supposed to be it’s hard to actually see anything. Sometimes, logic doesn’t work when you’re trying to come up with something new. In fact, a lot of inventions and scientific discoveries are mistakes.

How do you wake your brain up to the potential of the world around you? Can you make useful mistakes on purpose?

There’s an improvisational exercise I’ve found helpful. As quickly as you can, go around the room and point at ten objects. Then, give each object an incorrect name. If you point at a lamp, call it a slow cooker. If you point at a chair, call it a knife. Don’t sit in your chair and look at things, actually get up and move around the room and physically point at objects. Look at them closely as you name them.

The first time you do it, it will probably take you a while to come up with wrong answers. The more you do it, the faster you’ll get.

This process actually helps to break down predetermined categories in your brain and forces you to see things again for the first time.

I find that if I do the exercise quickly enough the world actually seems brighter and I notice details in things that I’ve never seen before. The effects also last for hours.

If you want to follow the exercise even further down the road, apply your logical brain to one of your incorrect answers.

Why did I call the lamp a slow cooker? Is there a connection? The light bulb does produce heat, could it cook? An Easy-Bake oven was just a light bulb in a plastic box and it cooked very slowly. Could you use the heat from the lighting in your house to cook? What if ovens were all boxes with giant light bulbs and you had to wear protective goggles to cook so you didn’t go blind?

Try the exercise and see if it works for you. Imagine how useful it would be to have a tool to help you wake up and pay attention whenever you wanted to.